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Sunday, May 10, 2015

Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) Review: Solid, stable and could have been the LTS release as well

I guess this is my first review after a gap of a couple of months. Actually I was busy with interesting developments in my professional career and right now, more busy with packing my and my family's stuff. We are shifting our base to Chicago, IL from Bangalore, India. Hence, I didn't find adequate time to actually pen down a review. Further, my Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon is running absolutely stable to the point of boredom that I didn't feel to try out any other distro. Even practically I gave Debian 8 and Ubuntu 15.04 release nearly a miss. I guess this will continue till end of month May. I am hoping in June I'll be able to get back to my schedule of 2-3 reviews a month.

Anyway, back to the review. I downloaded the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 15.04 ISO, about 1.1 GB in size. The release note from Distrowatch mentions the following changes:
The new release, which will be supported for nine months, features LibreOffice 4.4, version 3.19 of the Linux kernel and a switch from Canonical's Upstart init to systemd. "systemd has replaced Upstart as the standard boot and service manager on all Ubuntu flavors except Touch. At the time of the 15.04 release there are no known major problems which prevent booting. The only service which does not currently start is Juju, which will be fixed in a post-release update soon; all other packaged Ubuntu services are expected to work. Upstart continues to control user sessions... You can boot with Upstart once by selecting `Advanced options for Ubuntu' in the GRUB boot menu and starting the `Ubuntu, with Linux ... (upstart)' entry. To switch back permanently, install the upstart-sysv package (this will remove systemd-sysv and ubuntu-standard)."

Installation
Ubuntu 15.04 has a similar installation as the previous Ubuntu releases and should not challenge even Linux novice. The step by step installation process is intuitive and hardly takes 10 minutes to get the system running.

Hardware Recognition
Ubuntu Vivid has top notch hardware recognition and it was able to recognize my laptop's screen resolution, touch pad, wifi, sound card accurately. Everything worked as expected and I go with 100% score for hardware recognition.

My laptop has Nvidia graphics and now Bumblebee, bbswitch, dkms, etc. are all available in the official repositories. No need to add any external repository, which is good news. I followed the approach listed by Osgyan here. And it worked for me.

Score for Hardware Recognition: 10/10

Aesthetics
Unity 7.3.2 in Ubuntu Vivid is pretty similar in look and feel to the Unity 7.2 shipped with Ubuntu Trusty. The interface is original and attractive. The base of this distro is Gnome 3.14.

If you want to auto-hide launcher, you can change it from All Settings -> Appearance -> Behavior. It also has other controls for workspaces, desktop icons and showing menu for a window in the Window's title bar. I prefer menu on the title bar instead of menu bar.

The dash looks as elegant as before and not much changes from Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. The dash lenses are pretty same: Application, Files, Music, Photo, Video and Social Network messages. Web apps are there to directly access sites from Unity strip. Previously they used to open in Firefox but now the open in Ubuntu web browser. Ubuntu Browsers interface has improved and presents a more refined look.

As usual, special effects are subtle and not distracting. Boot splash is completely graphical and looks professional. Font rendering is superb, as usual. Also, I installed Unity Tweak Tool to create include some additional functions like autohide the Unity strip while working, include hot corners, etc. It is a pretty handy tool for all Ubuntu users.

Multimedia codecs and Adobe flash plugin gets downloaded during installation and work flawlessly.

Firefox is the default browser and it works very well. It has the basic plugins like Quicktime, Shockwave flash, VLC, iTunes, etc. and extensions like Unity and Ubuntu integration installed.

As mentioned Ubuntu Web Browser is much more user-friendly now with a top panel address bar. The version in Ubuntu Trusty is difficult to use. I like the Ubuntu Web Browser as it is the fastest I have used so far. Websites load incredibly fast on this little lightweight browser. Both flash and HTML 5 videos load well on this browser but I had issues with flash videos.

Latest stable version characterize the Ubuntu Vivid release. The application list is comprehensive enough to cover daily requirement of a normal home user.

Score for Pre-Installed Packages: 8/10

Repository
Ubuntu Vivid repository is the source of packages by default. Packages can be browsed and downloaded using the Ubuntu Software Center. Like Ubuntu Trusty Tahr, even Utopic Vivid has Ubuntu Software Center 13.10. What it means is that now Software Center is fairly stable and there is little or no incremental improvement on it. I could download the latest version of Chromium browser on Ubuntu Vivid.

Performance
Unity is one of the heaviest desktop environment I have used and it works fantastic on modern machines with ample RAM and multi-core CPUs. The present release supports a lot more modern machines than the LTS release.

I found in my benchmarking that Ubuntu Vivid consumes slightly lower RAM than Ubuntu Utopic. At steady state, it consumes about 504-510 MB RAM and 0-5% CPU. On the same machine, Ubuntu Trusty recorded about similar RAM.

Significantly I didn't note any stability issue during my usage and Ubuntu's new release worked flawlessly. The annoying pop-ups that I now accepted as a part and parcel of using Ubuntu's any new release, is notably absent in Vivid. Pretty neat!

Operating System (64 bit)

Release Year

Size of ISO (GB)

Base

Desktop

Linux kernel

CPU (%)

RAM usage (MB)

Size of installation (GB)

Boot time (sec)

Power (Watt)

Pardus 2.0

2013

1.7

Debian Testing

GNOME 3.8.4

3.10.3

0-5%

278

6.40

52

Mint Debian 201403 Mate

2014

1.4

Debian Testing

Mate 1.6.1

3.11.2

0-5%

282

4.40

40

Mint Debian 201403 Cinnamon

2014

1.4

Debian Testing

Cinnamon 2.0.14

3.11.2

0-5%

285

4.90

49

Mint 15 Cinnamon

2013

0.9594

Ubuntu Raring

Cinnamon 1.8

3.8.0

0-5%

307

5.10

32

Ubuntu Mate 14.10

2014

0.983

Ubuntu Utopic

Mate 1.8.1

3.16.0

0-5%

308

4.30

35

11.44

Mint 16 Cinnamon

2013

1.3

Ubuntu Saucy

Cinnamon 2.0

3.11.0

0-5%

312

4.10

45

Ubuntu GNOME 13.04

2013

0.9878

Ubuntu Raring

GNOME 3.6.3

3.8.0

0-5%

321

3.90

24

Tanglu 1.0 GNOME

2014

0.973

Debian Testing

GNOME 3.10.1

3.12.1

0-5%

321

4.00

44

Mint 15 Mate

2013

1.0

Ubuntu Raring

Mate 1.6.0

3.8.0

0-5%

325

4.50

30

Ubuntu GNOME 13.10

2013

0.9

Ubuntu Saucy

GNOME 3.8.4

3.11.0

0-5%

335

4.10

27

Mint 17 Ciinamon

2014

1.3

Ubuntu Trusty

Cinnamon 2.2.13

3.13.0

0-5%

345

4.50

44

Mint 17.1 Mate

2014

1.557

Ubuntu Trusty

Mate 1.8.1

3.13.0

0-5%

349

5.30

30

10.59

Mint 16 Mate

2013

1.4

Ubuntu Saucy

Mate 1.6.0

3.11.0

0-5%

355

4.50

31

Siduction 13.2.0 GNOME

2013

1.0

Debian Unstable

GNOME 3.8.4

3.12.0

0-5%

357

3.50

53

Linux Deepin 2013

2013

1.3

Ubuntu Raring

GNOME 3.8.1 (DDE)

3.8.0

0-5%

358

4.70

33

Mint 17.1 Cinnamon

2014

1.5

Ubuntu Trusty

Cinnamon 2.4

3.13.0

0-5%

362

4.90

46

11.24

Zorin OS 7

2013

1.7

Ubuntu Raring

GNOME 3.6.2

3.8.0

0-5%

364

5.60

28

Trisquel GNU/Linux 7.0

2014

1.5

Ubuntu Trusty

GNOME 3.12

3.13.0

0-5%

370

4.60

26

11.65

Ubuntu 12.04.3

2013

0.7

Ubuntu Precise

Unity 5.20.0

3.8.0

0-5%

370

3.00

39

Antergos 2013.11.17

2013

0.8

Arch

GNOME 3.10.1

3.12.4

0-5%

376

4.10

43

Ubuntu 13.04

2013

0.8

Ubuntu Raring

Unity 7.0.0

3.8.0

0-5%

377

4.00

26

Deepin 2014

2014

1.2

Ubuntu Trusty

Deepin 2.0

3.13.0

0-5%

400

4.50

27

Ubuntu GNOME 14.O4 LTS

2014

0.9

Ubuntu Trusty

GNOME 3.10.0

3.13.0

0-5%

416

4.50

33

Gajj 0.1 Cinnamon

2014

3.7

Ubuntu Precise

Cinnamon 2.0

3.11.0

0-5%

419

9.20

75

Fedora 20 GNOME

2013

1.0

Fedora

GNOME 3.8.2

3.9.5

0-10%

433

4.00

34

Elementary OS 0.2

2013

0.7

Ubuntu Precise

GNOME 3.6.3

3.2.0

0-5%

440

3.10

22

Zorin OS 8 Gaming

2014

4.0

Ubuntu Saucy

GNOME 3.9.90

3.11.0

0-5%

440

9.20

31

Zorin OS 8

2014

1.6

Ubuntu Saucy

GNOME 3.8.2

3.11.0

0-5%

445

5.60

31

Zorin OS 9

2014

1.4

Ubuntu Trusty

GNOME 3.10.4

3.13.0

0-5%

460

5.00

30

Ubuntu 13.10

2013

0.9

Ubuntu Saucy

Unity 7.1.2

3.11.0

0-5%

466

4.40

30

ExTix 14

2013

1.5

Ubuntu Saucy

GNOME 3.10.1

3.12.0

0-5%

468

4.80

33

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

2014

1.0

Ubuntu Trusty

Unity 7.2.0

3.13.0

0-5%

486

4.20

31

Pinguy OS 14.04

2014

2.3

Ubuntu Trusty

GNOME 3.12.2

3.13.0

0-5%

500

7.00

54

Ubuntu 15.04

2015

1.1

Ubuntu Vivid

Unity 7.3.2

3.19.0

0-5%

504

4.60

37

11.58

Ubuntu GNOME 14.10

2014

1.0

Ubuntu Utopic

GNOME 3.12

3.16.0

0-5%

515

4.80

39

11.21

Korora 21 Cinnamon

2015

1.8

Fedora

Cinnamon 2.4

3.18.6

0-5%

517

5.90

32

11.55

OpenSUSE 13.1 GNOME

2013

4.4

OpenSUSE

GNOME 3.10.1

3.11.6

0-5%

531

4.90

37

Ubuntu 14.10

2014

1.1

Ubuntu Utopic

Unity 7.3.1

3.16.0

0-5%

599

4.60

33

12.06

Fedora 21 GNOME

2014

1.4

Fedora

GNOME 3.14

3.17.7

0-5%

654

5.40

36

11.57

Score for Performance: 9/10

Overall
After using Ubuntu Vivid over a week, I didn't actually feel I am using a new release. The improvements are very subtle and under-the-hood. You won't even notice majority of them. However, I am not disappointed. Ubuntu developers are putting in a lot of effort on Mir and Systemd to integrate it with the Ubuntu mobile interface. The present release is perhaps a silence before the storm actually begins. I am eagerly waiting for the storm. Till that time, I prefer sticking to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with support till April 2019 rather than switching to a new release with 9 months of support.

By every means, Ubuntu 15.04 is a great release but unfortunately it is too similar to the LTS release. It gets a very good score from my side but still not recommended for upgrade if Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is working good for you.

Those who are interested can try out the Ubuntu 15.04 32 and 64 bit versions from the here.

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In the last couple of weeks I've checked out a few of the latest distributions, this one included. In the end it's still openSUSE Gnome Tumbleweed for me, which I've been running since early November and have yet to find anything else that I prefer. Would love to see a review of it.

I just have the one thing to ask. I am currently using the Ubuntu MATE 14.04.2 LTS and i would like to know how to make the panel transparent on the Mate DE as you have done in your Ubuntu MATE 14.10 review. I've tried googling this but it was in vain.

Great review! One thing I noticed reading this blog was that you compare distros 2013-present, which is quite a long time especially for Linux distros. Maybe you should compare distros from the past 6 months or so?

Any tips for improving my own blog (linuxdesktopreviews.blogspot.com)? Thanks!

Thanks for your review and it is a good guide also. I have installed Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) and tried to connect my Nokia Lumia 520 but could not succeed in my efforts. I have searched a lot but could not find any viable solutions. Can you suggest me any idea? -Thanks -Arun

I had tried that distro already. It's a polished and elegant one. It's based on Ubuntu 14.04. It's included CrossOver app which allows you to install and use MS Office easily as a native app - in my point of view, it's better than Wine or PlayOn linux to running Windows apps in Linux.

Hi Arindam, Please Review Netrunner 16. Right now Iam using it. But it will be useful for all people if you review Netrunner 16.(Known Bugs: a) System Hangs sometimes, b)Google Chrome & Chromium crashes/Hangs sometimes)

Hi Arindam ,I would like to know the link from where I can download the ubuntu for my laptop.I have even seen the other flavors of it like Mate , Kubunut ,Mint and Lubuntu but all are the desktop versions.I have downloaded from the official site the desktop version and I could not access the Wifi.Could you Please help me out with the link